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yes- well if you look at the strict definition for FASHION-period...
then it is not even what we all commonly accept as the definition of fashion...

so- there is a specific way in which the term avant garde is used within the confines of the fashion industry and that is what i propose that this thread is about...
not a debate on the definition as it relates to art, etc...
but how it is defined in this medium we call fashion...

and no...
of course it is not limited to what the japanese started...
christian dior was avant garde for his time...with the NEW LOOK
as was YSL...with LE SMOKING>>>

* GR - the other thread is still there...if you like you can continue to post there and ignore this one...
but we needed a separate thread that focused on what is really avant garde fashion and/or style without confusing the issue ...

__________________

"It is not money that makes you well dressed: it is understanding."
ChristianDior

ooo I like this thread softgrey thanks for posting
one question, if you say make a pair of pants with three legs, it fits the criterias for avant garde with forward thinking but it doesn't get picked up by anyone.. will it still be considered avant garde?
and also does that mean that you can't really say that something is avant garde until afterwards, when you can see if it got picked up by the mainstreem or not?

EDIT: ^I think he means that if you wear a combination of some stuff it only means that you styled it, you're not a designer, you didn't create it, you just chose to wear two stuff together in an odd way.. you didn't create anything from scratch

i think a lot of this has to do with intent...
and - as i said earlier- there will be hits and misses...
so-yes- if the three leg pants are an experiment..
then it may not work and in that case it is not creating a following...
but it is still pushing the boundaries and questioning the rules...
which is the intent...

so i think it's still fair to call it avant garde...
even if no one follows...
because it may inspire on some other level...
even if it just inspires more questions...

...

__________________

"It is not money that makes you well dressed: it is understanding."
ChristianDior

Avant-garde belongs to the modernist era, and its discursive use is now outdated, unless one is referring to the past. It was antagonistic towards mainstream culture; it was never supposed to be adopted by the mainstream. When this phenomenon did occur, it was not considered avant-garde, but as referencing an avant-garde aesthetic (as, for example, bohemian fashion references the style, but absolutely does not represent bohemian ideology).

i don't think this is outdated at all...
and it is exactly how i describe avant garde...

as soon as it is adopted by the mainstream...the avant gardist must move on...
or they are no longer avant garde...
so they are always pushing forward...moving towards the next thing...
until the mainstream eventually catches up again...
forcing them to push forward once more...

this is actually really good for society as a whole, imo...

Quote:

[Poggioli] opines that beyond having habitually non-conformist postures, Avant-garde creators have historically existed in a state of mutual antagonism towards both the public and tradition. As pioneers, avant-gardes have shunned popularity, seeing those who are popular as producing complacent or compromised work. This is also why avant-gardists have abhorred fashion, judging it to deal in stereotypes, falsehoods and insincere sentiments

and of course this is accurate as well...

avant gardists usually stand alone...
they are NOT part of the fashion mainstream...
they are anomolies in the world of fashion...
most of them are not found often covered in the pages of mainstream publications like Vogue and co...

they exist in another way...
on their own terms...
they are the punks of fashion...
they are fighting the system from within...

__________________

"It is not money that makes you well dressed: it is understanding."
ChristianDior

so- there is a specific way in which the term avant garde is used within the confines of the fashion industry

* GR - the other thread is still there...if you like you can continue to post there and ignore this one...
but we needed a separate thread that focused on what is really avant garde fashion and/or style without confusing the issue ...

I don't think there is a specific way it is used within fashion. I have never come across it. And if I am wrong, and it is the one that this thread proposes, then I am puzzled by it, as it's full of contradictions. Its boundaries and regulations are not clear-cut enough to warrant a new thread, and reject all the previous understandings. I will continue to post on the previous thread, but I think that this is quite unfair.

and softgrey gave examples of designers who are avant-garde (CDG, Yamamoto, the belgians etc.) ...

why are you like that ?

you're quoting Greenberg for calling avant-garde when his lecture of modernism is being totaly reviewed for years (out and in the USA) ...
and though his article "avant-garde and kitsch" (a text you can find anywhere onto the internet, by the way) is one of the most important essay for modern art (mostly due to his talent of critics and writter), i'm not sure this is the right person to quote for Avant-Garde when the guy totaly forgot to talk about Dadaists because they didn't stick to his formalist way of seeing art.

softgrey called YSL (I don't agree about Dior's New Look being avant-garde) and this man totaly stamped his period and the history of woman ... the same goes with Coco Chanel (in a way they are both linked to Fashion History for having free women). They were avant-garde.

but I think, too, the definition is very hard ...

look at CDiem or things like that ... Those guys are out of Fashion business and experiment with fashion ...
I think there's a thread in there ...

Why am I like what? I've obviously upset you, but I am also upset that this new definition doesn't warrant a new thread, in my opinion. I already said I'll just post on the previous thread when it doesn't fit, and here when it does. As for Greenberg, this thread was created to be about true avant-garde fashion, and I specifically used Greenberg to explain that many prominent theorists don't believe in avant-garde fashion in the first place. Even though his work is contested (as is normal with all discourse), it is very influential.

Why am I like what? I've obviously upset you, but I am also upset that this new definition doesn't warrant a new thread, in my opinion. I already said I'll just post on the previous thread when it doesn't fit, and here when it does. As for Greenberg, this thread was created to be about true avant-garde fashion, and I specifically used Greenberg to explain that many prominent theorists don't believe in avant-garde fashion in the first place. Even though his work is contested (as is normal with all discourse), it is very influential.

i think that is actually a really valid and fascinating point..
i think that true purists could successfully make the argument that avant garde fashion doesn't exist...for all the reasons you so elegantly pointed out...
it's a valid argument...
but for the sake of this thread..
let's just concede that avant garde fashion does exist...
and that even beyond that...avant garde personal style does exist...
what is it?...
what does it look like?...

berlinrocks...after i typed that about Dior i wanted to take it back...
i think you're right...it's not avant garde...
but you are SO right that chanel is..
how could i have forgotten...?

you know who i think was avant garde... Katherine Hepburn...

**were 1920's flappers avant garde because they took off their girdles..
and every single woman in the world followed suit...
???

__________________

"It is not money that makes you well dressed: it is understanding."
ChristianDior

they pushed women to have their own opinions and express themselves ... I guess, in their art and way of dressing, they have changed minds. so yeah - according to Saint-Simon, who used for the 1st time in 1825 the word avant-garde out of the military context - they have some sort of avant-garde attitude. they made a huge impact.

This is Greenberg's breakthrough essay from 1939, written for the Partisan Review when he was twenty-nine years of age and at the time more involved with literature than with painting. He came, later, to reject much of the essay -- notably the definition of kitsch which he later believed to be ill thought out (as, indeed, it is.) Later he came to identify the threat to high art as coming from middlebrow taste, which in any event aligns much more closely with the academic than kitsch ever did or could. The essay has an air and assurance of '30s Marxism, with peculiar assumptions such as that only under socialism could the taste of the masses be raised. But for all that, the essay stakes out new territory. Although the avant-garde was an accepted fact in the '30s. Greenberg was the first to define its social and historical context and cultural import. The essay also carried within it the seeds of his notion of modernism. Despite its faults and sometimes heady prose, it stands as one of the important theoretical documents of 20th century culture.
-- TF

This essay from 1968 is a pendant to and correcttion of Greenberg's celebrated Avant Garde and Kitch of 1939. Here he expounds what came to be regarded as a defense or justification of his beleaguered position. In fact, his sense of the unique character of art is far from new or defensive; it goes back to his early years (as the recently-published Harold Letters attest. As the title suggests, to Greenberg avantgardism is an attitude, certainly not a style, and was important insofar as it was one of the driving forces behind modernism. But he senses its dissolution, as well, with its implications for high culture -- if everyone is out front, who lags behind? if there's no high, is everything middle?Although this essay was delivered as a public lecture at a university, it points to Greenberg's separation from the academic world, which had become infested after the '60s with avant garde attitudes, as indeed, had popular culture. The question remains -- though no doubt a pointless one: are present-day academic and popular attitudes really avant, or is their avantness merely assumed?

“It is us, artists, who will be used to you as avant-garde: the power of arts is indeed most immediate and fastest. We have arm with any species: when we want to spread new ideas among the men, we register them on the marble or the fabric… What a more beautiful destiny for arts, than to exert on the company a positive power, a true priesthood and to spring in front of all intellectual faculties, at the time of their greater development! ”

Art, expression of the Society, express, in its highest rise, the social tendencies most advanced; it is the precursor and the revealing one. However, to know if art fulfills with dignity its role of initiator, if the artist with avant-garde, it is well necessary to know where Humanity goes, what is the destiny of the Species.

yes, because avant garde isnt necessarily about accessibility but the product that is derived from the artist's conception.

i firmly believe avant garde style does exist and its not about a single identifiable garment all the time, but, just as a designer can be innovative and edgy so can the wearer, by how and what they put together as an outfit. having a voice and stepping out of the herd to experiment with clothes is as natural to some as staying within the confines of acceptable society is to the larger population. a society needs those that see past "as is" to grow and stay interesting. wouldnt we just shrivel up with them?

yes, because avant garde isnt necessarily about accessibility but the product that is derived from the artist's conception.

i firmly believe avant garde style does exist and its not about a single identifiable garment all the time, but, just as a designer can be innovative and edgy so can the wearer, by how and what they put together as an outfit. having a voice and stepping out of the herd to experiment with clothes is as natural to some as staying within the confines of acceptable society is to the larger population. a society needs those that see past "as is" to grow and stay interesting. wouldnt we just shrivel up with them?

the term can be as broad and as narrow as the creator takes it.

I always thought it was a very specific term, but now it sems to be quite broad.

if what you meant was that you wore cardigans when your own generation didn't.

totaly ...
and i remember a friend who said 'oh look like a grandpa with your cardigan' ... and 2 seasons later this friend was wearing a cardigan because it hits some fabulous trendy shop ...

anyway ...

i wanted to post some "wearer" photos of avant-garde so i went onto SZ ... and sincerely found nothing very "pushing the envelope" ... i must say it's hard to find 'avant-garde' look outside the world of my sweet Rizzo ...
some of the SZ-ers are looking great and wearing some fabulous items but only a very few of them really push the bundaries (bcause they wear skirts over pants - a CDG total look almost) ...